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  <div class="section" id="language-class">
<h1>Language Class<a class="headerlink" href="#language-class" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>The Language Class provides functions to retrieve language files and
lines of text for purposes of internationalization.</p>
<p>In your CodeIgniter <strong>system</strong> folder, you will find a <strong>language</strong> sub-directory
containing a set of language files for the <strong>english</strong> idiom.
The files in this directory (<strong>system/language/english/</strong>) define the regular messages,
error messages, and other generally output terms or expressions, for the different parts
of the CodeIgniter framework.</p>
<p>You can create or incorporate your own language files, as needed, in order to provide
application-specific error and other messages, or to provide translations of the core
messages into other languages. These translations or additional messages would go inside
your <strong>application/language/</strong> directory, with separate sub-directories for each idiom
(for instance, &#8216;french&#8217; or &#8216;german&#8217;).</p>
<p>The CodeIgniter framework comes with a set of language files for the &#8220;english&#8221; idiom.
Additional approved translations for different idioms may be found in the
<a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/bcit-ci/codeigniter3-translations">CodeIgniter 3 Translations repositories</a>.
Each repository deals with a single idiom.</p>
<p>When CodeIgniter loads language files, it will load the one in <strong>system/language/</strong>
first and will then look for an override in your <strong>application/language/</strong> directory.</p>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="first admonition-title">Note</p>
<p class="last">Each language should be stored in its own folder. For example,
the English files are located at: system/language/english</p>
</div>
<div class="contents local topic" id="contents">
<ul class="simple">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#handling-multiple-languages" id="id1">Handling Multiple Languages</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#sample-language-files" id="id2">Sample Language Files</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#example-of-switching-languages" id="id3">Example of switching languages</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#internationalization" id="id4">Internationalization</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#using-the-language-class" id="id5">Using the Language Class</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#creating-language-files" id="id6">Creating Language Files</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#loading-a-language-file" id="id7">Loading A Language File</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#fetching-a-line-of-text" id="id8">Fetching a Line of Text</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#using-language-lines-as-form-labels" id="id9">Using language lines as form labels</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#auto-loading-languages" id="id10">Auto-loading Languages</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#class-reference" id="id11">Class Reference</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="custom-index container"></div><div class="section" id="handling-multiple-languages">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id1">Handling Multiple Languages</a><a class="headerlink" href="#handling-multiple-languages" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>If you want to support multiple languages in your application, you would provide folders inside
your <strong>application/language/</strong> directory for each of them, and you would specify the default
language in your <strong>application/config/config.php</strong>.</p>
<p>The <strong>application/language/english/</strong> directory would contain any additional language files
needed by your application, for instance for error messages.</p>
<p>Each of the other idiom-specific directories would contain the core language files that you
obtained from the translations repositories, or that you translated yourself, as well as
any additional ones needed by your application.</p>
<p>You would store the language you are currently using, for instance in a session variable.</p>
<div class="section" id="sample-language-files">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id2">Sample Language Files</a><a class="headerlink" href="#sample-language-files" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<div class="highlight-ci"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nb">system</span><span class="o">/</span>
        <span class="nx">language</span><span class="o">/</span>
                <span class="nx">english</span><span class="o">/</span>
                        <span class="o">...</span>
                        <span class="nx">email_lang</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="nx">php</span>
                        <span class="nx">form_validation_lang</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="nx">php</span>
                        <span class="o">...</span>

<span class="nx">application</span><span class="o">/</span>
        <span class="nx">language</span><span class="o">/</span>
                <span class="nx">english</span><span class="o">/</span>
                        <span class="nx">error_messages_lang</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="nx">php</span>
                <span class="nx">french</span><span class="o">/</span>
                        <span class="o">...</span>
                        <span class="nx">email_lang</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="nx">php</span>
                        <span class="nx">error_messages_lang</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="nx">php</span>
                        <span class="nx">form_validation_lang</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="nx">php</span>
                        <span class="o">...</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="example-of-switching-languages">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id3">Example of switching languages</a><a class="headerlink" href="#example-of-switching-languages" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<div class="highlight-ci"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nv">$idiom</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="nv">$this</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">session</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">get_userdata</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">&#39;language&#39;</span><span class="p">);</span>
<span class="nv">$this</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">lang</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">load</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">&#39;error_messages&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="nv">$idiom</span><span class="p">);</span>
<span class="nv">$oops</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="nv">$this</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">lang</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">line</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">&#39;message_key&#39;</span><span class="p">);</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="internationalization">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id4">Internationalization</a><a class="headerlink" href="#internationalization" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>The Language class in CodeIgniter is meant to provide an easy and lightweight
way to support multiplelanguages in your application. It is not meant to be a
full implementation of what is commonly called <a class="reference external" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization">internationalization and localization</a>.</p>
<p>We use the term &#8220;idiom&#8221; to refer to a language using its common name,
rather than using any of the international standards, such as &#8220;en&#8221;, &#8220;en-US&#8221;,
or &#8220;en-CA-x-ca&#8221; for English and some of its variants.</p>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="first admonition-title">Note</p>
<p class="last">There is nothing to prevent you from using those abbreviations in your application!</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="using-the-language-class">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id5">Using the Language Class</a><a class="headerlink" href="#using-the-language-class" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="creating-language-files">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id6">Creating Language Files</a><a class="headerlink" href="#creating-language-files" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Language files must be named with <strong>_lang.php</strong> as the filename extension.
For example, let&#8217;s say you want to create a file containing error messages.
You might name it: error_lang.php</p>
<p>Within the file you will assign each line of text to an array called
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">$lang</span></tt> with this prototype:</p>
<div class="highlight-ci"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nv">$lang</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s1">&#39;language_key&#39;</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s1">&#39;The actual message to be shown&#39;</span><span class="p">;</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="first admonition-title">Note</p>
<p class="last">It&#8217;s a good practice to use a common prefix for all messages
in a given file to avoid collisions with similarly named items in other
files. For example, if you are creating error messages you might prefix
them with error_</p>
</div>
<div class="highlight-ci"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nv">$lang</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s1">&#39;error_email_missing&#39;</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s1">&#39;You must submit an email address&#39;</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="nv">$lang</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s1">&#39;error_url_missing&#39;</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s1">&#39;You must submit a URL&#39;</span><span class="p">;</span>
<span class="nv">$lang</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="s1">&#39;error_username_missing&#39;</span><span class="p">]</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s1">&#39;You must submit a username&#39;</span><span class="p">;</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="loading-a-language-file">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id7">Loading A Language File</a><a class="headerlink" href="#loading-a-language-file" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>In order to fetch a line from a particular file you must load the file
first. Loading a language file is done with the following code:</p>
<div class="highlight-ci"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nv">$this</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">lang</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">load</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">&#39;filename&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s1">&#39;language&#39;</span><span class="p">);</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Where filename is the name of the file you wish to load (without the
file extension), and language is the language set containing it (ie,
english). If the second parameter is missing, the default language set
in your <strong>application/config/config.php</strong> file will be used.</p>
<p>You can also load multiple language files at the same time by passing an array of language files as first parameter.</p>
<div class="highlight-ci"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nv">$this</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">lang</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">load</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="k">array</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">&#39;filename1&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s1">&#39;filename2&#39;</span><span class="p">));</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="first admonition-title">Note</p>
<p class="last">The <em>language</em> parameter can only consist of letters.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="fetching-a-line-of-text">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id8">Fetching a Line of Text</a><a class="headerlink" href="#fetching-a-line-of-text" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Once your desired language file is loaded you can access any line of
text using this function:</p>
<div class="highlight-ci"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nv">$this</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">lang</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">line</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">&#39;language_key&#39;</span><span class="p">);</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Where <em>language_key</em> is the array key corresponding to the line you wish
to show.</p>
<p>You can optionally pass FALSE as the second argument of that method to
disable error logging, in case you&#8217;re not sure if the line exists:</p>
<div class="highlight-ci"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nv">$this</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">lang</span><span class="o">-&gt;</span><span class="na">line</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s1">&#39;misc_key&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="k">FALSE</span><span class="p">);</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="first admonition-title">Note</p>
<p class="last">This method simply returns the line. It does not echo it.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="using-language-lines-as-form-labels">
<h4><a class="toc-backref" href="#id9">Using language lines as form labels</a><a class="headerlink" href="#using-language-lines-as-form-labels" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h4>
<p>This feature has been deprecated from the language library and moved to
the <a class="reference internal" href="../helpers/language_helper.html#lang" title="lang"><tt class="xref php php-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">lang()</span></tt></a> function of the <a class="reference internal" href="../helpers/language_helper.html"><em>Language Helper</em></a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="auto-loading-languages">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id10">Auto-loading Languages</a><a class="headerlink" href="#auto-loading-languages" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>If you find that you need a particular language globally throughout your
application, you can tell CodeIgniter to <a class="reference internal" href="../general/autoloader.html"><em>auto-load</em></a> it during system initialization. This is done
by opening the <strong>application/config/autoload.php</strong> file and adding the
language(s) to the autoload array.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="class-reference">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id11">Class Reference</a><a class="headerlink" href="#class-reference" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<dl class="class">
<dt id="CI_Lang">
<em class="property">class </em><tt class="descname">CI_Lang</tt><a class="headerlink" href="#CI_Lang" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><dl class="method">
<dt id="CI_Lang::load">
<tt class="descname">load</tt><big>(</big><em>$langfile</em><span class="optional">[</span>, <em>$idiom = ''</em><span class="optional">[</span>, <em>$return = FALSE</em><span class="optional">[</span>, <em>$add_suffix = TRUE</em><span class="optional">[</span>, <em>$alt_path = ''</em><span class="optional">]</span><span class="optional">]</span><span class="optional">]</span><span class="optional">]</span><big>)</big><a class="headerlink" href="#CI_Lang::load" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><table class="docutils field-list" frame="void" rules="none">
<col class="field-name" />
<col class="field-body" />
<tbody valign="top">
<tr class="field-odd field"><th class="field-name">Parameters:</th><td class="field-body"><ul class="first simple">
<li><strong>$langfile</strong> (<em>mixed</em>) &#8211; Language file to load or array with multiple files</li>
<li><strong>$idiom</strong> (<em>string</em>) &#8211; Language name (i.e. &#8216;english&#8217;)</li>
<li><strong>$return</strong> (<em>bool</em>) &#8211; Whether to return the loaded array of translations</li>
<li><strong>$add_suffix</strong> (<em>bool</em>) &#8211; Whether to add the &#8216;_lang&#8217; suffix to the language file name</li>
<li><strong>$alt_path</strong> (<em>string</em>) &#8211; An alternative path to look in for the language file</li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field-even field"><th class="field-name">Returns:</th><td class="field-body"><p class="first">Array of language lines if $return is set to TRUE, otherwise void</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field-odd field"><th class="field-name">Return type:</th><td class="field-body"><p class="first last">mixed</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Loads a language file.</p>
</dd></dl>

<dl class="method">
<dt id="CI_Lang::line">
<tt class="descname">line</tt><big>(</big><em>$line</em><span class="optional">[</span>, <em>$log_errors = TRUE</em><span class="optional">]</span><big>)</big><a class="headerlink" href="#CI_Lang::line" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><table class="docutils field-list" frame="void" rules="none">
<col class="field-name" />
<col class="field-body" />
<tbody valign="top">
<tr class="field-odd field"><th class="field-name">Parameters:</th><td class="field-body"><ul class="first simple">
<li><strong>$line</strong> (<em>string</em>) &#8211; Language line key name</li>
<li><strong>$log_errors</strong> (<em>bool</em>) &#8211; Whether to log an error if the line isn&#8217;t found</li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field-even field"><th class="field-name">Returns:</th><td class="field-body"><p class="first">Language line string or FALSE on failure</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field-odd field"><th class="field-name">Return type:</th><td class="field-body"><p class="first last">string</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Fetches a single translation line from the already loaded language files,
based on the line&#8217;s name.</p>
</dd></dl>

</dd></dl>

</div>
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